1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a vehicle control device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a vehicle control device of the related art, a control has been developed that causes the vehicle to travel automatically in order to facilitate driving when the vehicle travels and reduce a driving load on the driver. For example, in a travel control plan generating system described in Japanese Patent Application Publication 2008-129804 (JP-A-2008-129804), travel planning is performed by including a travel trajectory or speed pattern of a vehicle and also including a travel trajectory of a peripheral vehicle, thereby enabling automatic traveling that is flexibly adapted to variations in conditions of surrounding environment, while satisfying the travel objectives of the host vehicle.
In this case, when the control is performed to cause the vehicle to travel automatically, various types of information are detected with detection means such as sensors that detect the position of the host vehicle and surrounding environment, but reliability of these detection means during detection changes depending on the state in which each type of information is detected. When reliability of the detection means thus changes, reliability attained when the travel control of the vehicle is performed is decreased and adequate travel control is sometimes difficult to perform.